influence of which men, great in intellect, have given the lie to their
own convictions, by calling that religion which they knew to be rank
superstition. Fear of punishment for writing truth is the grand cause
why their books contain so little of it. If Bacon had openly treated
Christianity as mere superstition, will any one say that his life would
have been worth twenty-four hours purchase. He lived at a time when
heresy, to say nothing of Atheism, was _rewarded_ with death. Bacon was
not the man to be ambitious of such a reward. Few great geniuses are.
Philosophers seldom covet martyrdom, and hence it came to pass that few
of them would run the terrible risk of provoking bigotted authority by
the 'truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth' concerning
religion. In our own day the smell of a faggot would be too much for the
nostrils of, that still unamiable but somewhat improved animal, called
the public. One delightful as well as natural consequence is, that
philosophical writers do ever and anon deal much more freely with
religion than its professors are _disposed_, though _compelled_, to
tolerate. But, even now, with all our boasted liberty of conscience, not
one in one thousand of those who _think_ truth about religion dare
express it. Philosophy still exhibits, in deference to popular prejudice
and fanaticism, what the great French maximist defined as 'the
homage that vice pays to virtue.' Such is the rule to which, most
fortunately for the pause of truth, there are many, and some splendid,
exceptions. One of these is worth citing not only because of its
intrinsic merit, but because the thing to be cited includes an opinion
of religion, and a marked distinction between what is _pious_ and what
is honest, that calls for especial notice. The exception referred to is
a paragraph from a paper on Saint Simonianism, written by Colonel
Thompson, and originally published in the Westminster Review, of April
1, 1832, containing these remarkable words:--'The world wants _honest_
law-givers, not pious ones. If piety will make men honest, let them
favour us with the honesty and keep the piety for God and their own
consciences. There never was a man that brought piety upon the board
when honesty would do, without its being possible to trace a transfusion
in the shape of money or money's worth, from his neighbour's pocket into
his. The object of puzzling the question with religion is clear. You
cannot quarrel for sixpences with the man who is helping you the way to
heaven. The man who wants your sixpences, therefore, assumes a religious
phraseology, which is cant, and cant is fraud, and fraud is dishonesty,
and the dishonest should have a mark set on them.'
There is an old story about a certain lady who said to her physician,
'Doctor, what is your religion?' 'My religion, madam,' replied the
Doctor, 'is the religion of all sensible men.' 'What kind of religion is
that?' said the lady. 'The religion, madam,' quoth the Doctor, 'that no
sensible man will tell.'
This doctor may be taken as a type of the class of shrewd people who
despise religion, but will say nothing about it, lest by so doing they
give a shock to prejudice, and thus put in peril certain professional or
other emoluments. Too sensible to be pious, and too cautious to be
honest, they must be extremely well paid ere they will incur the risk
attendant upon a confession of irreligious faith. Like Colonel Thompson,
they know the world needs _honest_ lawgivers not pious ones, but unlike
him, they won't say so. Animated by a vile spirit of accommodation,
their whole sum of practical wisdom can be told in four words--BE SILENT
AND SAFE. They are amazed at the 'folly' of those who make sacrifices at
the shrine of sincerity; and while sagacious enough to perceive that
religion is a clumsy political contrivance, are not wanting in the
prudence which dictates at least a warning conformity to prevailing
prejudices.
None have done more to perpetuate error than these time serving 'men of
the world,' for instead of boldly attacking it, they preserve a prudent
silence which bigots do not fail to interpret as consent. Mosheim says,
[90:1] 'The simplicity and ignorance of the generality in those times
(fifth century) furnished the most favourable occasion for the exercise
of fraud; and the impudence of imposters, in contriving false miracles,
was artfully proportioned to the credulity of the vulgar; while the
sagacious and the wise, who perceived these cheats, were overawed into
silence by the dangers that threatened their lives and fortunes, if they
should expose the artifice. Thus,' continues this author, 'does it
generally happen, when danger attends the discovery and the profession
of the truth, the prudent are _silent_, the multitude _believe_, and
impostors _triumph_.'
Beausobre, too, in his learned, account of Manicheism reads a severe
lesson to the 'sensible _dummies_, who, under the influence of such
passions as _fear_ and _avarice_, will do nothing to check the march of
superstition, or relieve their less 'sensible,' but more honest,
fellow-creatures from the weight of its fetters. After alluding to an
epistle written by that 'demi-philosopher,' Synesius, when offered by
the Patriarch the Bishopric of Ptolemais, [91:1] Beausobre says, 'We see
in the history that I have related a kind of hypocrisy, which, perhaps,
has been far too common in all times. It is that of ecclesiastics, who
not only do not say what they think, but the reverse of what they think.
Philosophers in their closet, when out of them they are content with
fables, though they know well they are fables. They do more; they
deliver to the executioner the excellent men who have said it. How many
Atheists and profane persons have brought holy men to the stake under
the pretext of heresy? Every day, hypocrites consecrate the host and
cause it to be adored, although firmly convinced as I am that it is
nothing more than a piece of bread.'
Whatever may be urged in defence of such execrable duplicity, there can
be no question as to its anti-progressive tendency. The majority of men
are fools, and if such 'sensible' politicians as our Doctor and the
double doctrinising persecuting ecclesiastics, for whose portraits we
are indebted to Mosheim and Beausobre, shall have the teaching of them,
fools they are sure to remain. Men who dare not be 'mentally faithful'
to themselves may obstruct, but cannot advance the interests of truth.
Colonel Thompson is right. In legislation, in law, in all the relations
of life, we want _honesty_, not piety. There is plenty of piety, and to
spare, but of honesty--sterling, bold, uncompromising honesty--even the
best regulated societies can boast a very small stock. The men best
qualified to raise the veil under which truth lies concealed from vulgar
gaze, are precisely the men who fear to do it. Oh, shame upon ye
self-styled philosophers, who in your closets laugh at 'our holy
religion,' and in your churches do them reverence. Were your bosoms
warmed by one spark of generous wisdom, _silence_ on the question of
religion would be broken, the multitude cease to _believe_, and
imposters to _triumph_. But the desire to enlighten others is lost in
regard for yourselves, and what Mrs. Grundy may say, is sufficient to
frighten ye from the enunciation truth.
Is superstition no evil? Is there nothing hateful, nothing against which
unceasing war should be waged, in the degradation of those unhappy
persons who worship idols of their own imagination? Can error be fraught
with good and truth with evil, that we should shrink from doing justice
to both? Everywhere are learnedly ignorant or basely cunning men, who
would scare us from dealing with religious error, as all error deserves
to be dealt with, by high-sounding jargon about the danger of freeing
vulgar minds from the wholesome restraints of certain antiquated
beliefs. Themselves essentially vulgar by habit and in feeling, their
estimate of human tendencies is of the meanest, the most grovelling
description. Measuring the _chaff_ of other men by their own bushel,
they arrive at the pious but false conclusion that without fear of God
there can be no genuine love of man, and that without faith in some one
of our five hundred and odd true religions, all the thoughts of our
hearts would be evil continually. They insist upon it that the 'absolute
Atheist,' if virtuous, is so by accident not design; that he can neither
love truth, justice, nor his neighbour, except by sheer luck, and that,
if bad as his principles, would cut the throat of every man, woman, and
child who might have the misfortune to fall in his way. They argue as if
none can think good thoughts or purposely perform good acts unless so
far eaten up by superstition as always to keep in view the probable
_rewards_, or equally probable _vengeance_ of some supernatural Being.
Faith in human goodness, irrespective of reward and punishment, either
here or hereafter, sophists of this bigotted class have literally none.
Influenced by fanaticism and stimulated by cupidity they let slip no
opportunity of dealing out upon such as oppose their hideous doctrines
the choicest sort of vituperative blackguardism. The reader knows this
is no idle or ill-considered charge. He has seen at the commencement of
this Apology verbatim extracts, affecting the moral character of
Atheists, from books written by pious Christians, so utterly disgusting
that only those in whom every sense of delicacy, truth, and justice has
been obliterated, by a worse than savage creed, can peruse them without
horror.
Not inaptly, we conceive, has religion been likened to a madman's robe,
for the least puff of reason parts it and shows the wearer's nakedness.
This view of religion explains the otherwise inexplicable fact that
eminent piety is usually associated with eminent imbecility. Such men as
Newton, Locke, and Bacon are not remembered and reverenced on account of
their faith. By all but peddling narrow-thoughted bigots they are held
in honour for their science, their matter-of-fact philosophy; not their
puerile conceits about 'airy nothings,' to which half crazed
supernaturalists have assigned 'a local habitation and a name.' Lord
Bacon laid down principles so remote from pious, that no man can
understand and philosophise in strict accordance with them, if he fears
to embrace Atheism. From his _Novum Organum Scientiarum_ may be
extracted an antidote to the poison of superstition, for it is there we
are told that _aiming at divine things through the human, breeds only an
odd mixture of imaginations_. There we are told that _Man, the servant
and interpreter of Nature, can only understand and act in proportion as
he observes or contemplates the order of nature--more he cannot do._
There too is set down the wise lesson that truth is justly to be called
the daughter, not of Authority, but Time. Bacon abhorred superstition.
He denounced it as the 'confusion of many states,' and for a 'religious
philosopher' wrote most liberally of Atheism. No one who has read his
Essay on Superstition can doubt that he thought it a far greater evil
than Atheism. Any man who should now write as favourably of Godlessness
would be suspected of a latitudinarianism quite inimical to the genius
and spirit of 'true religion.' The orthodox much prefer false piety to
no piety at all. Mere honesty does not satisfy them. They insist on
faith in their chimerical doctrines and systems, as 'the basis of all
excellence.' To please them we must sacrifice truth as it is in Nature,
at the shrine of truth as it is in Jesus, and believe what derives no
sanction from experience. Bacon taught us to 'interpret nature,' and
that 'aiming at the divine through the human breeds only an odd mixture
of imaginations;' but these hair-brained fanatics who would have us
believe him _one of them_, care little for natural knowledge, and affect
contempt for all that concerns most intimately our 'earthly
tabernacles.' Bacon taught us to _consider as suspicious every relation,
which depends in any degree upon religion_, [93:1] but wiser than that
'wisest of mankind,' our _real_ Christians execrate such teaching, and
will have nothing _good_ to do with those who walk in the light and
honestly act in the spirit of it. How dare they then pretend to
sympathise with the opinions of Bacon? It is true he announced himself
willing to swallow all the fables of the Talmud or the Koran, rather
than believe this Almighty frame without a Mind; but who is now prepared
to determine the precise sense in which our illustrious philosopher used
the words 'without a mind.' We believe his own interpretation altogether
unchristian. 'To palter in a double sense' has ever been the practice of
philosophers who, like Bacon, knew more than they found it discreet to
utter. But with all their discretion, Locke, Milton, and even Newton did
not succeed in establishing an orthodox reputation. The passages from
Locke given in this Apology do at least warrant our opinion that it may
fairly be doubted whether he was either a Christian or a Theist. Had he
been disposed to avow Atheistical sentiments, he could not have done so,
except at the imminent hazard of his life. Speculative philosophers do
not usually covet the crown of martyrdom, and are seldom unwilling to
fling down a few religious sops to the Cerberus of popular bigotry. It
was the boast of Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemais, that when communing with
himself, he was always a philosopher, but when dealing with the mass of
mankind, he was always a priest. Who knows how far John Locke followed
the _safe_ example. That he was a materialist his writings prove; and
every far sighted Theist will admit that Atheism is the natural
termination of Materialism. John Locke may have been a devout believer
in 'thingless names,' to which no merely human creature can attach clear
and distinct ideas: he may have thought the Bible had one of the said
'thingless names' for its author, salvation for its end, and truth
without mixture of error for its matter; though very probable he
affected such belief, to shield himself from persecution; but it is
quite certain, and may be affirmed without injustice, that he should to
have professed Atheism; for his own rule of philosophising is
inconsistent with belief in any thing supernatural. While living he was
often charged with Atheism, by opponents who understood the tendencies
of his philosophy better than he appeared to do himself. But the Author
of this Apology has no such mean opinion of John Locke, as to suppose
him ignorant that Materialism, as he taught it, is totally
irreconcileable with that God, and that Religion in which he professed
to believe. Belief in inconceivable entities cannot be reconciled with
disbelief of all entities, save those of which we can frame clear and
distinct ideas. Nor is it easy to persuade oneself that Locke could so
far have done violence to his own principles as to feel 'lively faith'
in a 'science' with no other aim, end, or ground-work, than 'the
knowledge and attributes of the unknown.'
By a late writer in the Edinburgh Review, we are told that 'some of the
opinions avowed by Milton,' were so 'heterodox,' as to have 'excited
considerable amazement.' We can scarcely conceive, says this writer,
that any one could have read his Paradise Lost without suspecting him of
heterodoxy; nor do we think that any reader acquainted with the history
of his life, ought to be much startled by his opinions on marriage. The
opinions which he expressed regarding the nature of the Deity, the
eternity of matter, and the observation of the Sabbath, might, we think,
have caused more just surprise. [95:1] Add to this good reader,
Dr. Johnson's statement, ('Lives of the Poets,' p. 134, Art. Milton,)
that in the distribution of his (Milton's) hours _there was no hour of
prayer, either solitary or with his household_; and then come, if you
can, to the conclusion that he was a Christian.
The piety of Newton we are not prepared to dispute. It is certain he
manufactured for himself a God, inasmuch as to space he ascribed the
honor of being His sensorium. It is equally clear that he believed
Christianity a divine system, inasmuch as he wrote, and rushed into
print with, a lot of exquisite nonsense about the exquisitely
nonsensical Apocalypse. But we defy pietists to ferret out of his
religious writings, any argument in defence of religion, not absolutely
beneath contempt; the best of them are execrably bad--mere ravings of a
disordered and o'erwrought intellect. 'The sublime Newton,' said
D'Holbach, 'is but a child when he quits physical science, to lose
himself in the imaginary regions of theology.' He failed, nevertheless,
to achieve the favour, or escape the wrath, of thorough-going
theologians who were in ecstacies at his childishness, but bitterly
detested him, as they detested every man who had the audacity to open up
new, and widen old fields, of investigation; to reject chimera and hold
fast by fact in the pursuit of knowledge, and to teach a series of
scientific truths, no ability can reconcile with the philosophy (?) of
Jesus and Moses, who, according to wise Dr. Epps, never intended to
teach man NATURAL SCIENCE, which he defines to be 'God in Creation;' but
'came to teach, in referring to natural events, SCIENTIFIC UNTRUTHS.
[95:2]
The Author hopes that the opinions here advanced in reference to what
may be named the Argument from 'Authority,' as contradistinguished from
'Time,' will make obvious to Christians themselves, that it is an unsafe
argument, an argument which, like the broken reed, not only fails, but
cruelly wounds the hand that rests upon it. Much evidence _has been_,
and much more _can be_ adduced to show that no prudent, well-informed
Christian will say anything about the sanction lent to Christianity, or
religion of any sort, by the writings of Newton, Milton, Bacon, and
Locke. By admirers of such sanction, (?) this, our Apology for Atheism
will, no doubt, be rejected with indignant contempt, but we venture to
predict for it better treatment at the hands of those who are convinced
that _untruth_ can no more be _scientific_, than truth can be
_unscientific_, and that belief, whether in the God of Nature, the God
of Scripture, or the Scripture itself, opposed to Philosophy, must needs
be opposed to Reason and Experience.
[ENDNOTES]
[4:1] 25th of November, 1845.
[5:1] Vide 'Time's' Commissioner's Letter on the Condition of Ireland,'
November 28, 1843.
[10:1] Essay 'of the Academical or Sceptical Philosophy.'
[11:1] See the Creeds of R. Owen and R. Carlile in No. 14 of the
Promptor.
[11:2] 'Essay of the Idea of Necessary Connexion.'
[11:3] 'Essay of a Providence and a Future State.'
[12:1] Critical remarks on Lord Brougham's 'Lives of Men of Letters and
Science, who flourished in the time of George III.'--The Times,
Wednesday, October I, 1845.
[13:1] History of American Savages.
[13:2] Appendix the Second to 'Plutarchus and Theophrastus on
Superstition.'
[13:3] Philosophy of History.
[15:1] See a Notice of Lord Brougham's Political Philosophy, in the
number for April, 1845.
[20:1] 'Apology for the Bible,' page 133.
[20:2] Unusquisque vestrum non cogitate prius se debere Deos nosse quam
colere.
[27:1] See a curious 'Essay on Nature.' Printed for Badcock and Co., 2,
Queen's Head Passage, Paternoster Row. 1807.
[31:1] Elements of Materialism, chapter I.
[32:1] Discussion on the Existence of God, between Origen Bachelor and
Robert Dale Owen.
[37:1] Answer to Dr. Priestly on the existence of God, by a
Philosophical Unbeliever.
[40:1] Treatise on Human Nature.
[41:1] This sexing is a stock receipt for mystification.--_Colonel Thompson._
[44:1] The Rev. J.E. Smith.
[46:1] 'An Address on Cerebral Physiology and Materialism,' delivered to
the Phrenological Association in London, June 20, 1842.
[49:1] No 40 of 'The Shepherd.'
[50:1] 'The Shepherd,' Vol. i., page 40.
[52:1] Extracts from an able letter to the Editor of 'The Shepherd,' in
No. 23 of that periodical.
[54:1] Novum Organon.
[56:1] Principia Mathmatica, p. 528. Lond. edit., l726.
[63:1] See a pamphlet, price Sixpence, entitled 'Paley refuted in his
own words,' by G.J. Holyoake.'
[63:2] Lessing.
[64:1] See "Extract from an unpublished work, entitled the 'Refutation
of Deism,'" by the late P.B. Shelley--given in the Model Republic of May
1st, 1813.
[68:1] 'Westminster Review' for May, 1843.
[69:1] Lecture by the Rev. Hugh M'Neil, Minister of St. Jude's Church,
Liverpool, delivered about seven years since, in presence of some 400 of
the Irish Protestant Clergy.
[69:2] The necessary existence of Deity, by William Gillespie.
[69:3] Page 105 of a Discussion on the Existence of God, between Origen
Batchelor and R.D. Owen.
[70:1] Quoted by Dr. Samuel Clarke, in his introduction to the Scripture
doctrine of the Trinity.
[72:1] History of England, p. 51.
[75:1] 'Dictionary of Conversions,' page 4.
[76:1] Essay on Superstition.
[77:1] See article 'Auto da Fe,' vol. i. of 'Recreative Review,'
published in 1821.
[77:2] Act of Faith.
[78:1] St. Foix observes, with respect to this tomb, that if the Jack
Ketch of any country should be rich enough to have a splendid tomb, this
might serve as an excellent model.
[81:1] 'Lives of Men of Letters,' by Henry Lord Brougham.
[82:1] Vol iii., page 593, 594, of 'A few hundred Bible Contradictions,
a Hunt after the Devil, and other odd matters.' By John P.Y., M.D.
[83:1] No. 8 of J. Rutherford's Series of Tracts, and entitled 'Electing
Love.'
[90:1] Ecclesiastical History, vol. ii. page 11.
[91:1] 'Manicheisme,' tome ii, p. 568, 569.
[93:1] Nov. Org., lib; ii. aph. 29.
[95:1] See 'Edinburgh Review' containing a notice of Milton's 'De
Doctrina Christiana.'
[95:2] Page 55 of a Pamphlet entitled, 'The Devil.'
End of Project Gutenberg's An Apology for Atheism, by Charles Southwell